In Two by Two we saw architect Joseph Bellamo use concrete piers as a riser for his Home Arc design. But what would happen if you started with the concrete blocks and just kept stacking them?

That seems to be essentially what architects Jose Maria Saez and David Barragan have done to create Pentimento House.

There’s of course more to it than just stacking concrete blocks. In Pentimento House the concrete blocks were prefabricated for both size and shape, and the stacking method is designed to allow the right amount of air and light to pass through. Still, the idea seems alarmingly simple.

For obvious reasons the house is impractical for many climates, but in the right ones the simple use of passive heating and cooling might work quit well.

Pentimento is the still visible image under layers of paint on a canvas – so we can only guess that the architects are referring to the layering of concrete in their naming. Read post in Inhabitat.